Scrap Happy – Some Uses for Cardboard
Gingerbread House support
January 2022 has been quiet and sluggish, but we have developed a weekly pizza porch party tradition with our granddaughter and family, and have kept it up for the last year! The greasy side of a pizza box is not a very useful raw material so it gets rolled up and used for kindling. The top of the box could go into the municipal recycling, but we have found a few uses for cardboard scraps including laminated foil-wrapped cardboard bases for our gingerbread houses…
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Gold Paint
…and I used another pizza box top to make a some cardboard Hitty furniture including this elegant bed (I posted a full tutorial a few days ago on January 8th)…
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Wedgewood
…and this pretty one…(the black and gold-holly bed is going to my granddaughter for her new Holly dolly, but I am afraid some of the Hittys are squabbling over the Wedgewood one).
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Rush chair inserts
I have also been re-rushing a chair that I found at the side of the road (after pulling off the mouldy rushes, applying steel-wool and sandpaper to the wood, and rubbing on a coat of “Puritan Pine”). The chair had an original seat of real rushes, but the material sold nowadays for this purpose is made of twisted brown recycled paper (possibly there is an old pizza box or two in there?). Cardboard is inserted into the seat between the layers to soften the edge of the seat rail, and provide a bit of cushioning.
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Original cardboard
The original rush seat of this chair had cardboard in it too!
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Assistant
Siyah keeps her eye on the work. January has been scrappily productive as well as sluggish!
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ScrapHappy is a group of bloggers using up scraps of anything – no new materials…Anything made of genuine scraps is eligible, and posts come out once a month on the 15th! If you like the idea and want to join the group, contact Kate or Gun who devised and run this group. Their blogs are the first two links below:
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Quimper Hittys 
What fun! I re-rushed two similar chairs for a friend’s mother when I was 16. Fifty years on, I still remember the wonderful smell of the rushes as they soaked to make them pliable. The down side was a few deep cuts to my hands, but I would love to have another go.
Though I don’t condone the squabbling and am very surprised that the generous-spirited Quimper ladies are involved in it, I do understand their desire to sleep in such a lovely bed. The colour is beautiful and the lace is an elegant touch. Perhaps they should draw lots and take a night each in order of the results? Or maybe they could make it the best bed, kept for visiting Hittys?
Whoever sleeps in it, it will be a wonderful addition to the furniture in the Hitty Cupboard.
I re-caned a chair for my parents about that long ago…the chair just came to live with me after my mother died and my dad went into assisted living. What fun to see (and sit on) it again! I was thinking about tracking down some proper rushing instructions but ended up with the paper twine…mostly because I didn’t want to wait until August to go hunt up a friendly ditch. I am not completely thrilled with the look but it’s much better than mouldy rushes and I do like the way it is shaping up.
Oh gosh, you’re braver than I am with re-rushing. I’d probably have resorted to making a hard seat insert and upholstering it, but this is much more authentic.
I find string games much less daunting than carpentry! I loved the look (though not the mildew) of the real rushed seat and wanted to emulate it as far as I was able, though since aside from being the wrong time of year, it is not easy to find a random pond with handy rushes around here, so I went for the recycled paper “rushing”. I like the idea that there might be a pizza box in the paper!
Well, both rush and paper string are embodied carbon, I guess 😊
the blue bed is gorgeous, the Hittys will have to take turns sleeping in it – perhaps on their birthdays? Definitely know what you mean by sluggish.
It was such fun to make nice little bits of furniture from “rubbish”. The Hittys will eventually calm down and take turns in the Wedgewood bed! Unfortunately they can’t sleep two at a time as it is a bit narrow!
As always….it’s luscious to read your postings….I always like your 15th scrapping sessions very much too! Thanks for the long distance encouragement, creativity and enjoyment that you so aptly type and photograph for us.
Scraps are so inspiring to me, I love not throwing things away, it reminds me of my frugal grandmother!
Wow! I didn´t know there were so many ways to use a pizza box! Only the sky is the limit! Fantastic!
It was fun to think of all things I’ve done with a pizza box lately – and it all starts with a nice Friday meal for my family!
Total genius. I am in complete awe of your furniture making skills, large and small.
I was given a doll’s rushed-seat chair which had to be re-woven, and it wasn’t too difficult so I felt confident to do the human-sized one…I like the way it is looking now…the cardboard furniture was just pure fun!